Aha! so what you are saying is that cutting power to the ACC line merely jumps it into standby mode which you can then jump out of manually? Cool!

Then all I have to do to turn it off again is put it back into standby mode manually and it'll automatically shut down completely after however many seconds you set the standby time to? Also cool! Us Brits are pretty damn clever!

But... say I want to turn the Empeg back on from a full shutdown - would I have to supply power to the ACC line (ie stick the key back in) or does the machine still poll the buttons when in full shutdown?

If it does then that's all my bases covered and I'll be able to happily stick to the intended wiring plan and everything in the garden will be lovely. Woohoo! This thing gets cooler by the minute Now I just have to hope that my Kenwood only uses its ACC line for signal info (which I'm sure it does) and then I'm pretty much sorted wiring-wise... now I just have to work out how I redesign my dash! I'll take pics for you all if I manage it...

Wish me luck!